


Shepherd Meet Shepard

by Coffin Liqueur (orphan_account)



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series), Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Crossover, F/F, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light-Hearted, Mass Effect 2 - Bad Ending, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Transformation, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23220523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: Charlie counts herself lucky that the Hotel's been able to take off and expand the scope of its operations alongside the scope of the space-age world of the living.It doesn't mean you can't still be surprised by the rate at which you... get some extrainterestingtypes.
Relationships: Charlie Magne/Vaggie
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: /r/FanFiction Prompt Challenge #17 / March 2020





	1. Hi-Fiddle-Dee-Dee, The Afterlife For Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the r/FanFiction March 2020 Crossover Special Challenge. Challenge: _Hazbin Hotel_ & _Mass Effect_.

It had never been unusual for people to arrive in Hell en masse - not since, in the grand scheme of history, really quite shortly after it had first come to be. People would fall in military battles and both natural and man-made disasters that glutted the numbers of sinners as well as those fortunate enough to be on the up-and-up.

Madame Charlie was only glad that the Hotel had not only succeeded but grown so much since its founding in time for humankind to leave and grow off of Earth.

Not that it didn’t still put a sting in her chest - that jarred sensation down to the core of your nerves you feel when you hear a _scrrrape!!_ on a detuned violin - when she saw reports on the news like this. A confirmed _Well of Souls_ event - a veritable hail of new demons pouring down from the sky over just one focused part of the city, from any number of catastrophes from the old tried-and-true to a station’s systems blowing or a spaceship accident. Needing to take these on had become common as Hell had started to expand with the scope of the known-to-demons living world - the spirits of mages and biotics from more and more afterlives getting more and more muddled and bloated finding ways to reach out to the Princess of the realm running a growing… _transferral_ program, was what they called it now. She had resources.

And still, even as one of the biggest buildings in the Pentagram, the Hotel was still liable these days to find itself fully-booked.

...Thank god she’d had Vaggie’s strength and pragmaticism on her side along with Alastor’s acumen and… _force of personality_ while in the process of growing one literal hell of a large-scale service on her side.

...Speaking of Vaggie…

...Well.

She swayed to lean into the arm of the couch, crossing her legs. She set one hand on the side table and began drumming her nails, each finger coordinated in the click-and-jump of nervous tapdancing.

She flipped out her hellphone. Switched her eyes on it to choose the name in her contacts for a brief moment before skating them back to the TV, at the silhouettes falling from the sky, black on red, faintly under-lit almost magenta by the glows of the city’s many lights. Dialed.

The phone rang once before pickup.

“Vaggie…?” she said, old-if-softened smile pulling wide, wearing her classic here-goes-nothing mix of hope and abashment to herself, ever-earnest. She laughed once, to herself, in that same spirit, as was likewise fairly customary. “Looks like we’re gonna have another doozy on our hands…”

Thank god she _still_ had that.

* * *

Shepard fell and hit the ground twice.

After the first collision, when she realized she was falling again, her thoughts were, in truth, a tangled snarl of _“again…?!”_

More baffled than even shocked.

She’d died before. She’d felt her whole body break on that first impact; it had given way to the same dullness-into-nothing that everything had been sucked out to give way for when the ship went down the first time, those years-now ago.

There was nothing else that felt like that.

No way in hell should she have survived that fall, and no way she should be able to still feel herself falling.

Or hitting the ground again, just as hard - enough to jar an “oomph -- !” of a grunt out of her and have her whole face twisting in a grimace as she picked herself up on hands and knees.

Not enough, apparently, to splinter her bones too much for her to pick herself up on anything, let alone her consciousness.

She heard a car.

Her head snapped up - teeth bitten into a wince. She was hallucinating, she thought. Somehow not dead yet, but sure as hell gone.

She had fallen onto the street of a grimy city, lit in reds and oranges. She _was_ hallucinating. She was hallucinating being on Omega. Gangly creatures passed by, crawled about.

...She didn’t recognize any of them.

A scan to her right side. Another creature picked itself up off the ground beside her, as if from the same damn fall, in the same damn fashion. White and black - she thought it was Miranda for one shaky-baffled moment ( _you didn’t wake up the_ last _time that I found you, not a minute ago_ ) before she saw animal-pointed nose and the black-tipped tail; it went from reminding her of Miranda to reminding her of one of those fancy weasel things they used to make coats out of - erm-somethings.

A scan to her left side, picking herself up higher. A streamlined blue creature, made upon plates upon plates of some kind of shining alloy. It made her think of Garrus, in another stunning pang of cognitive confusion ( _Joker said you didn’t make it_ ) before she was unable to parse out anything that looked organic in between the shining plates, and thought instead of a character from a children’s line of action figures or video games.

She winced again, at a sharp crick in her back, pushing herself up to a crouch. She surveyed around her more widely.

More creatures either beginning to stand or just-beginning to stir on the ground. All as varied as you’d see from anything on a quick jaunt down a hall of the Citadel. She made out something with the head of a shark; something with a long stinger tail the armored plates on which rattled and clicked as it flexed.

From somewhere in front of her, there sounded a honk. The kind you’d hear from an old-fashioned car.

It had taken her a moment to realize that the light in her face had started to shift from grimy neon red to a clean off-yellow.

She looked up. Saw headlights fast-growing and fast-brightening. _Just_ reeled backward, throwing her forearm in front of her face - as the car began to swerve.

Her reel, at the screech, became almost a swing back; wind off the vehicles momentum whipped at her face and hair.

...The car seemed as if it took minutes to finish slowing to a stop. Shepard cocked her head to look at it a bit more clearly under her arm, squinting slightly.

It was a limousine, she quickly, if _dully_ , realized. Shiny in a pale, gentle teacup-pink.

She heard a door open toward the front. Dropped her arm, snapped into sitting up straight, looking toward it as if down a long hall.

Two women approached.

Nicely-dressed, both blonde, arm-in-arm.

They, too, just barely unrecognizable on any level.

They both looked human at first.

And then neither of them did - the one in the blazer with pale yellow eyes, a face that looked like it had been painted like somewhere in between a doll’s and a clown’s; the one in the gown and the ribbons with skin the color of ash and one visible eye under her hairstyle in a strange candy pink.

Both smiled.

The one in the blazer stepped forward - gave one little jazzhand-style fanning wave.

“ -- Helloooo!” she said, with a little too much sugar. A little put-on. “Um -- my name is Charlie Magne…” A point at herself. “...and this is my wife, Vaggie…” Turned the point to the girl in the gown, whose smile pulsed deeper.

They exchanged a couple of quick-twitching glances. The girl in the blazer pulled her smile on bigger, too, as they turned toward each other slightly, holding hands.

“And… as Princess and Princess-Consort of your new home, and as -- prioprieters of the Afterlife’s premier transferral hotel…”

 _The Afterlife_ , Shepard thought for a moment - quick-blinking and averting her eyes for a split second. _Never seen girls like these at the Afterlife. There’s no fucking_ way _they would mean…_

“We’d like to personally welcome you…” Blazer Girl held out her arm. A slow-motion flourish forward, at and behind and over Shepard. “...and all of your companions…

“...tooooooo Hell!”

A sound hit in Shepard’s head like a bang.

Accompanied by a heat.

...Blazer Girl giggled softly. Her grin tightened. Sheepishly.

...Shepard’s eyes cast downward.

_...Oh._

...Another flinch and soft grimace as, finally, she stood. One knee up. Pushed down to pull the other leg up. Started dusting her thigh off.

“Commander Shepard,” she said. “Spectre.”

...She briefly, softly fluttered out a scoffing laugh at some inexplicable tickle.

_Is this for real…?_

“And I’ll bet you get this a lot, but I don’t exactly have time to waste kickin’ around in Hell.”


	2. Check-In

Charlie had had much longer intake queues than this before.

Compared to the lines of hundreds upon hundreds out the door she’d had to help out in the past created by multi-way clashes of entire warship fleets, lines stretching from in front of her desk to the beginning of a circle around the exterior of the multiple-revamped building, the Normandy crew were, well… the crew of just one downed ship - and their ship hadn’t been downed, the Commander had explained; much of the crew had been abducted, and the others had been killed on land, in _ a  _ **_life-or-death mission_ ** _ , let’s say… _ \- at no point in stacking their paperwork had she needed to break out a stepladder, so…

...It hadn’t been as bad as she had fretted it might be, in terms of time taken to serve everyone and strain on the Hotel itself.

As she tapped a last sub-stack of papers and folders against her desk - get them nice and aligned - however, she still… felt a little of a woozy, silent-but-turning rush in her head; some tingling at the ends of her nerves.

There weren’t  _ many  _ of them, no, relatively-speaking.

But they were  _ one varied bunch _ for a single ship.

By now, she was used to noting down a handful of different afterlives that could claim Earth as their connection point to the living world when taking on new…  _ batches  _ of visitors. Heaven knows that, well… ironically, neither she nor the higher-ups in Heaven had had an easy time getting souls moved on once those from Palaven and Thessia along with the first few from Earth to fall in without having expected Heaven anyway, due to crossed wires, but then… Heaven had managed to send emissaries to the Amatsukami and Nirvana, who had made calls, and...

Thus.

The  _ rehabilitation  _ program had expanded to the  _ transferral  _ program.

It wasn’t every day, however, that she got this much variety in a group this size.

Sure, it happened, but… the shark-faced krogan had asked  _ her  _ where krogans were  _ “supposed to go” _ , in the manner one asks a question after a scoffing, mildly-inconvenienced  _ “hell,  _ I _ don’t know” _ .

There was a  _ drell  _ in the crew.

An old-fashioned one.

She had, by now, only spoken perhaps three times to the old Rakhanan gods.

She wasn’t sure yet if they liked her.  _ Why wouldn’t they _ , Vaggie had said, and on one hand,  _ heh heh… thanks _ , like usual, and on the other,  _ I mean, I just can’t  _ tell _ … _

\-- And at the first cast of an orange glow on the edge of her desk in the periphery of her vision, her nerves tingled… tighter. Seized and locked her shoulders.

Her eyes rolled up from the files to the Commander, wandering past her desk in a slow, half-swinging swagger, stone-faced, her eyes and the numerous fissures in purplish skin shining like pools and jagged streams of lava.

Charlie took in a deep breath. It swelled her chest - good counter to the old urge to duck behind the folders. To peek. She conjured up a wide-stretching, lips-thinning smile - let it tease up off that furthering jumping tingle in her shoulders…

“...Yes, Miss... Shepard…?” she giggled in. No humor, but her voice, too, nervously jumping and bubbling.

...She let her eyebrows lift and knit sheepishly. Not so much a bid for endearment rather an  _ “excuse me in advance” _ .

“Before we head up to our rooms, I got one question,” the Commander said. Smooth yet casually dry.

The tingle down Charlie’s back became a faint stab. Her smile sealed and twisted.

Shepard asked one of the handful of questions Charlie was used to coming after that intro, as with one last sway of her boot, she came to a stop in front of the center of the desk. Looking down at her from around her shoulder.

“What am I doing, being in Hell?”

Charlie swore there was a faint… smolder under it, despite the evenness and dryness maintaining.

She frowned, still apologizing with her eyes. Set the folders down and let the pupils follow.

She always kinda wished the answer was her fault.

...Stood up, however, leaning on straight arms with palms placed flat on either side of the folders. Still looking up at the new glowing demon from below. Pulled on that grin again; let it split half-open to show pointed teeth on one side, biting a still thoroughly-abashed smile and cutting off a likewise  _ awkward  _ giggle.

“Un -- fortunately, ma’am…” she said - downcasting her eyes for a flick. Easing that smile some. Eyes flicking back up and shaking her head, hair swaying. “...I don’t  _ get  _ that kind of information on souls when they first come in. To tell what a soul’s sins are…” A slow tilt of her head one way. “...or whether or not they meet the criteria to be sent to their afterlife of choice, they’ve… they’ve either gotta tell me, or -- our staff has to figure it out through monitoring.”

A couple of small, small nods.

And then the Commander smirked. “Guess it’s not too tricky to figure out what we’re doing down here after all,” she said, with a rolling swell in her voice almost like… amusement…? A shrugging lift of her shoulder. The purple of her skin began to warm to the color of dark sandstone. “Seeing as for starters, everyone on my squad’s got a body count somewhere in the triple digits.

Charlie’s eyes rounded.

A glow had begun to appear around the Commander.

Like a hazy aura, halogen-red.

It made Charlie think of Alastor.

She gulped down something hard - casting a stone down into a well in her stomach.

Shaken up by the ripples and echoes came an uneven toothy smile; a few little bounces of laughter.

“Yeah,” she said. “...That’d probably do it.”

“I should go,” said the Commander. One small nod, smile gone.

...And Charlie’s eyes rounded and face neutralized again.

The aura, too, had already just about faded. Charlie… sized her up from face to boots with her gaze taking a deliberate, open pan. Pan back up to her face.

Purple again. No glow cast, anymore, but those from those golden-orange fissures.

She furrowed and cocked a brow before she could catch herself or consider it.

Meanwhile, the purple demon took a quick glance over her shoulder. Back. “Better help my squad settle in.”

...Charlie pulled her smile back in, nice and far into her apple-cheeks. Sweet. Uncertain.

“...No problem,” she said. Swept one of her hands up into a thumbs-up. “Um… anytime, Miss Shepard. Just… drop on by if you or any of your folks needs something...”

Tone still trembling and wavering with a mixture of laughter both sweet and uncertain as the Commander rounded, dropped her arms, and sauntered straight for the door.


	3. Those Without Sin

Jack held a blazing-eyed smirk on Grunt’s face all the way till they kicked their way into the seats at the lobby bar.

His _weird fucking shark_ face, at that. Didn’t know whether she was pissed or whether it was a cognitive-dissonance trade-off that sure, with these strange-ass wide-set eyes, she could see him nice and clear past the end of this fucking varren nose, but the corners of her vision had widened so much that by no means was she forced to focus on him. Way too much else to take in. The rest of the lobby interior. The stairs leading up to the first floor of rooms. The fucking cat monster sitting on their left. All stuff worth watching.

...There was _no way_ Earth sharks came in red. Not that she’d been.

“Yeah, tough guy,” she said, smirk tugging wider, speaking briskly. Syllables hitting like jabs. “You may have that krogan _constitution_ on your side, but my gut says I get an edge by not having been born yesterday.” Leaned her arm on the counter; shook her head. “Tolerance doesn’t come completely out of thin air.”

Grunt growled.

She figured he was provoked. Couldn’t quite tell if it was in the how dare you kinda way or the _heh… bring it_ on kinda way.

Fuckin’ unreadable new fish face.

Still.

She let her head fall to the side, smirk maintained.

“I already know who’s gonna win,” he rumbled. "You think I'm losing to a _varren?_ "

‘Least he sounded the same.

He pounded his fist on the table. Lightly. For a krogan. “Enough _talking_ and let’s get _drinking_.”

Jack’s eyes half-lidded. “Good by me.”

The cat-thing was already in the side of her vision with her snout straight to Grunt, swiggin’ something that smelled quite a bit _spicier_ than some regular ale from a whole big brown bottle with its butt in the air. She barely did more than toss her head to indicate him with her _“hey”_.

The cat-thing’s throat stobbed bobbing as slit-pupiled golden eyes switched to her.

Unamusedly.

“You got recs for any _strong_ shit this place has on the menu?”

The cat lowered the bottle. Turned to face her halfway.

...Then plunked it down with a jab as, likewise, he plunked his face down into a long-nailed paw. A rumbling, vocalized, goddamn open sigh.

Jack narrowed her eyes a hint - scoffed, faintly, through flaring nostrils.

All the while, the cat hopped off the bench; rounded the counter to the shelves. A quick look over his shoulder and the top of a wing.

“Hold your horses,” he said, before sorting through bottles of every color and size and darkness and neon-luminosity at the tip of a claw, like some kinda professor sorting through a shelf of books on god-knows-what.

The liquid in the bottle he selected glowed a cyan blue.

The browned label read “THE STRONGEST SHIT!!!”, and then, in smaller script below, “Call security to bar before serving!!”

Jack chuckled to herself, in a silent vibration, new fanged teeth showing.

The cat picked one glass from a shelf below. Plinked it down. Repeat with another. One tooth hooked over the lower lip at the high point of the curve of an uneven scowl and his eyes didn’t damn well travel higher than glass or bottle as he gave one pour. Then another.

When he finally did turn his eyes on back up, they were damn dead.

Jack’s face, too, had deadened. Slapped down some of the cash Shepard had allotted her, stiff-handed, and said, with a small under-burn, “Your welcome.”

The cat huffed. One last glance at her and Grunt before he swiped the money up into a fist and flounced back to his seat. Promptly slumped.

Jack exchanged a glance with Grunt likewise, and a grin, as they raised their glasses. No clink, no here’s-tos - just a lockin’ of eyes and an unspoken you ready? before they threw ‘em back.

She had to say, it wasn’t bad for the strong shit. Tasted like heavy-duty cleaner with just enough a’ some kind of fruit she didn’t know the fucking name of to take the _this will kill me_ edge off of it, but she felt it burnin’ her up from the first trace of it to actually make it into her system. Already swore she saw the ceiling lights flaring up brighter…

She sure was gonna fuckin’ feel it later when, as the cat rumbled in sudden again, she practically sneezed on the stuff.

“If Charlie asks, you didn’t see _bull-fuckin’-shit_ , okay?”

Jack wheezed through her nose - wincing and doubling hard at the burn in her sinuses, a sneer of spite at the goddamn pain stretching across half of her fucking fish-dog face.

Grunt chuckled. “ _...Tolerance_ , right?”

Another sizzling breath out, and then in… and then...

“... _Fuck yourself_ ,” she said, flingin’ a dagger-look up at him. Whipped her head around to the cat before she could see the dumbass lug smile.

Cat blinked once. “Me _cheatin’_ ,” he said. Face still dead - impassively so this time. He nudged the brown bottle by him with the back of a claw. “I’m supposed to be up there.” From that nudge to a ceiling-ward point; shook his head a couple times, half-lazily. “Only reason I’m down here is ‘cause I work the bar.”

Jack let that sit once. Blinked slowly, herself, as it processed.

...Then spat a “puh”, halfway between her teeth.

The bare minimum of an intentional, snide forced smile drawing up one corner of her mouth.

“Pretty fucked up of them to have a bar if even the damn _barman’s_ not allowed to drink.”

The cat’s eyes drifted into their corners. Towards the bottle. “Ehhhh, I don’t drink _half_ as much as I used to these days.” He flicked it once. Twice. Thrice. Rhythmically. “Probably not even what the pretentious sons-of-bitches upstairs even let me _in_ for, anyway. It ain’t the _only_ addiction I kicked.” Muffled. “Or cruddy _thing_ , _period_.”

Turned his pupils back to Jack; slumped forward. “Still - “ Shook his head again in a toss. Narrowed his eyes. “ - I’m not gonna have Charlie think I’m fallin’ off the wagon and _losing_ me this job.” A quick gesture side-to-side, his paw waving indistinctly through the air. “Maybe I’m kinda attached to this place.” A scoff, paw dropping again. His eyes rolled up into a corner. “Even if it _has_ gotten into some real glitzy bullshit over these years.”

“Hey,” said Jack. Lifting her palms, managing to smirk again, with a duck of her head preceding a nod upwards. She, too, shook her head. “...I’m not someone to _judge_ , gramps.”

A glance back at Grunt.

His palm was on top of his drained glass. Fingers “tapping” in midair. He was lookin’ at her, too, sidelong.

She still felt herself smirking.

“I know chances are _I’m_ not getting to Heaven.”

Turned to nod the other way again. Gave a wave.

“Now where the hell’s our second round?”

The cat’s whole face twisted with his long, drawn _grumble_ as he slipped off his stool again.


End file.
